Common // Wealth

Summer 2011

2011 IDSA Midwest Professionals Bronze Award Winner

Designed for a capstone thesis, Common//Wealth is a system of creative capture for designers. The idea arose from the need for a "digital Commonplace Book" that let designers store and share their inspiration and process in the context of projects they were working on. The visual language of the bee also helped to relate the importance of organic discovery and collaboration to a modern, digital product. What set Common//Wealth apart from other "everything bucket" services was that users could have communal storage for a specific project. At the end of a project, Common//Wealth then gathers the inspiration and process into a shareable timeline.

Functional front-end prototype apps were designed for the iPhone and iPad, developed using HTML and CSS. These apps represented the intimate capture and browsing habits inherent in each device. A brand identity and stationery were also created to help express the concept. Promotional items and even a startup pitch-package was formed to present to groups. Common//Wealth was created in collaboration with my colleague and best friend, Kyle Koch. His main contribution came from the design of the desktop site, which allowed for finer control of the information and timeline.

In the summer of 2011, this project won the IDSA Midwest Professionals Bronze Award. While it never developed beyond these prototypes, we do feel validation for some of our forward-thinking ideas (in 2011) in current products like Evernote, Pinterest, and Glassboard.

A customized ScanDeck, designed by Kyle Koch for easily capturing paper documents into Common//Wealth using the iPhone camera.

Stationery System for the Common//Wealth brand.

The website for Common//Wealth was designed by my colleague, Kyle A Koch and you can find more about his part in the project here.